Key trends that we're seeing our business covers point-of-sale and
packaging on the point-of-sale side we've had this technology a little bit
longer than the packaging side but in the packaging side we're seeing some
really encouraging trends coming through and we're seeing some of the big buyers
some of the brands now actually saying that they want digital print as opposed
to analog print and because there used to be a stigma with well can you match
our Pantone specific corporate colour and there was a reticence to use digital
technology but the colour gamut now on digital technology is pretty much solved
that and so that was a bit of a blocker and I think there is a trend towards
people accepting digital for what it is now and the huge ability for it to
promote products in a different way than you could do in an analogue way but
having said that there is also a trend towards using both analog and digital
together so if you take our business for instance if we're running point of sale
units occasionally we would use analog for one process and then digital for
another so we're getting the best of both worlds and when I'm talking analog
in our particular business I'm talking screen print which is you know something of a
great importance to FESPA in the old days while it's certainly still around
there and we do mix it with digital technology
we've seen customer demand change over the years in several ways
again if you look at our business packaging and POS the POS side or the
point-of-sale side demand we're seeing shorter run lengths
but more prints so orders coming through more often but shorter run lengths so
we've seen that but we're also seeing the demand in the packaging side taking
a similar route so the run lengths are tending to get a little bit shorter but
we're doing more prints the interesting thing though if you know we're quite a
good sort of barometer to see what's going on between the two sectors and in
the corrugated sector for packaging digital technology has been in the past
a little bit too slow and cumbersome but that's not the case now
so we've got single pass machines coming out instead of multi pass multi pass
used to be great and still is great for point-of-sale but it's a little bit too
slow and expensive for certain packaging applications so longer run packaging
applications but now you've got platforms which are single pass occurs
under the head once finished and so the quantities can be much much larger which
is great for the packaging model and you've now got the manufacturers your big
digital machine manufacturers that are embracing the packaging side as their
next big step change
the challenges we face as a business really are we're a trade supplier so so
Swanline is a trade supplier and the biggest challenge we have is we have to
keep highering the bar our customers are not interested in us just supplying them
with something that everybody else does they want us to find new solutions and
we've been pretty successful at doing that but what is a challenge is that the
progression of these technologies is so rapid that we have to when we're looking
for an investment we look for future proofing it so the danger for us is if
we don't buy the right equipment for our business and it's out of date in two
years well what do we do you know we need an upgradable platform and I think
this is recognized by a lot of the big machine manufacturers they do upgrade
the platforms but the challenge is we've got to get it right first time if we get
it wrong it can be very very costly and not fit our business model long term so
that's one challenge I guess the other challenge we have is educating consumers
and getting them to see the advantage of digital we have the well publicized in
the industry at the moment in packaging about sustainability and reusable
materials and you know again for digital digital is a very precise process so
there isn't a waste analog technology it does have waste it's pretty good these
days but it does have waste so we have to look at the sustainable message as
well we're looking at a long term investments we're looking at the
sustainability angle as well we're looking about you know the Ink set for
instance and what materials we can cover we're looking at changing materials to
sustainable options which tend to be paper-based and we have a company within
our group that does that as well so we have a real focus on these other
parallel importances if you like to the digital process
what I'm quite excited about is the collaboration if you like between FESPA
and some of the corrugated converters now so that is actually driving
awareness before we've not had that awareness quite so defined by an
association that's really exciting for me and that will drive natural
progression to our business